seventy-six millions had to be deducted for various liabilities the
government had incurred, leaving only a net income of thirty-seven
millions--that is to say, the outlay was more than six times the income.

The armies were neither paid nor fed, the officers received "food-tickets"
(_billets de subsistance_), which they got cashed at a discount of 80 per
cent. The government had anticipated by ten years its revenues from the
towns. Still, this pale corpse of France must needs be bled anew to gratify
the inexorable Jesuits, who had again made themselves complete masters of
Louis XIV's mind. He had lost his confessor, Pere la Chaise (who died in
1709), and had replaced him by the hideous Letellier, a blind and fierce
fanatic, with a horrible squint and a countenance fit for the gallows. He
would have frightened anyone, says Saint-Simon, who met him at the corner
of a wood. This repulsive personage revived the persecution of the
Protestants into a fiercer heat than ever, and obtained from the moribund
King the edict of March 8,1715, considered by competent judges the clear
masterpiece of clerical injustice and cruelty. Five months later Louis XIV
died, forsaken by his intriguing wife, his beloved bastard (the Due de
Maine), and his dreaded priest.

The French monarchy never recovered from the strain to which it had been
subjected during the long and exhausting reign of Louis XIV. Whether it
could have recovered in the hands of a great statesman summoned in time is
a curious question. Could Frederick the Great have saved it had he been
_par impossible_ Louis XIV's successor? We can hardly doubt that he would
have adjourned, if not have averted, the great catastrophe of 1789. But
it is one of the inseparable accidents of such a despotism as France had
fallen under, that nothing but consummate genius can save it from ruin;
and the accession of genius to the throne in such circumstances is a
physiological impossibility.